May 2016

Love (Part Two)

Jeff Carter

Jeff Carter

We’ve taken a 6-month journey exploring the traditional virtues associated with the historical celebrations of Advent-then spilling over into the season of Lent and the approach of Easter. These virtues of hope, joy and love really do inform much of what the Christian life is all about. This month we round out this discussion in part two of our look at love.

We discussed last time the different types of love. We saw how love is vulnerable; how love is a choice and is commanded of us. And we also discussed how love is selfless. But it’s important to see that love is also sacrifice.

John 3:16 is a verse that is quoted so often that it can very easily lose its power. But the love that is described in this one verse gets to the heart of another facet of the meaning of love-sacrifice. To give up what is most precious to us for the sake of another is the greatest kind of love imaginable. God so loved the world that He gave us His Son-to be abused, to be rejected, and to be killed, so that we might have life. In this one verse, John encapsulates the gospel message. God loved, and so He sacrificed.

When you become a parent your view of life changes; your view of God changes; and your view of love changes-not to mention what you are willing to sacrifice for another. You have a new perspective on what it means for God to call you His child. The love you have for your children radically transforms your view of love-and your view of how God must feel about you. I can imagine situations where I would give up my life for someone else. But I honestly have a much harder time imagining a scenario where I would give up the life of one of my children. But this is the sacrifice God made for us.

The heart of John 3:16 is explored later in John’s book as well when Jesus said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This sacrificial love was the motivation for the greatest sacrifice of all time-not just that God the Father gave us His Son, but that God the Son gave us Himself. We often focus in on the death of Christ as the center of that sacrifice, but there is another facet we need to wrap our minds around. This is the fact that not only in the crucifixion did Christ display untold sacrifice, but also in the incarnation-in Christ becoming man. What we sometimes forget is that the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, took on flesh-took on an additional nature to forever become the God-man. He did not cloak Himself in human flesh for a mere 33 years. No, what is most mind-boggling is that at this very moment, there is a man standing at the right hand of the Father. Jesus chose to locate Himself, in all the fullness of deity, forever within the confines of a human body. I don’t know if we will ever truly understand the sacrifice this entailed. Sacrifice is an absolutely undeniable element in our definition of love.

We can see how this idea of sacrificial love played out in the lives of just about every major character in scripture; but none more than in the life of Joseph and Mary. They had to give up so much and endure such shame and dishonor in how their culture viewed the circumstances of Jesus’ conception and birth. But their sacrifice only serves to point us so much more clearly to the inspiration for that sacrifice. That’s what the love of God is and does-it is inspirational and contagious. Joseph and Mary were willing to give of themselves because God was willing to give of Himself. This is who God is and the kind of willingness He inspires. The very heart and fundamental core of the message of scripture; in fact, a summary of the entire narrative of scripture is seen in the concept of self-giving sacrifice.

One final aspect of love is that it must be shared. There is no possible way to conceive of a love that is kept to oneself. The love of God was the impetus for creating mankind in the first place. The overflowing love of God absolutely had to be poured out upon others. Not that there was any kind of need within God-but that love of that quality and magnitude exists to be expressed.

So, I guess the question remains…what does this kind of love motivate us to do? In fact, how does the Bible characterize what flows from this kind of love? In a word…obedience. Now this is not just external conformity to the Law but the internal desire for righteousness-a longing to be like Christ-a desire that our hearts beat as one. This is the core of how God wants us to look at love.

The Bible has quite a few things to say on this matter (and they all sound very similar):

“If you love me, keep my commands (John 14:15).

 

“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching…Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching” (John 14:23-24).

 

“If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love” (John 15:10).

 

“…this is love for God: to keep his commands” (1 John 5:3).

 

“And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands…” (2 John 1:6).

There are many more passages that re-emphasize this point. Obedience of God is the heart of love. What this comes down to is that we cannot know God until we know His commandments-His desires for how we should live. And we cannot truly love God until we obey His Word. The more you know God, the more you will desire to obey Him. And the more you obey Him, the more you will love Him. It’s like a growing crescendo building upon itself. Again, love is a verb. It is something we must do.

Love, then, flows in two directions-vertically and horizontally. Much of what we have discussed pertains to the horizontal. But we must be sure to first lay the groundwork in the vertical. Our relationship with God is the foundation and wellspring for love. We must attend to that relationship first so that we can truly know love; so that it can flow from us to all those around us. Lewis goes so far as to say that we cannot love a fellow creature until we love God.

So now we have a foundation upon which to understand sacrificial self-giving love more clearly. We see in the obedience of Joseph and Mary a beautiful example of self-sacrifice. They gave up their status, their reputation and good name, their position within the community-all because of this love. And that self-giving sacrifice was in response to the love that God had poured out upon them.

sacrificial loveThe love of God, and in fact, love itself, is defined for us by the incarnation. The incarnation was not just the embodiment of God into human flesh, it was the embodiment of love as well. We humans oftentimes need concrete examples for us to truly and fully grasp a concept. As we have seen with all the different facets of love, and the nuances needed to attempt to define it, love is one of the most elusive ideas to get our minds around. Knowing this, God set about on a plan that would once and for all end all debate as to what true love is. Love is God giving us His only begotten Son. Love is that Son willingly offering up His life, and suffering the cumulative punishment that all of us deserve-in order to save us and be with us for eternity. “This is real love–not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” (1 John 4:10 NLT).

-Jeff

Please join us as Pastor Jeff leads us in an exploration of suffering and how we can get our minds around such a difficult topic. This class will begin on May 10th and will run for 3 or 4 weeks. It will be held on campus at Irvine Community Church on Tuesday mornings and evenings. Please see the class description page online for more information.